“_Cleo_: Give me mine angle, we’ll to the river: there, My music playing far off, I will betray Tawny finn’d fishes; my bended hook shall pierce Their slimy jaws, and as I draw them up, I’ll think them every one an Antony, And say ‘Ah, ha! you’re caught.’ “_Charmian_: ’Twas merry when You wager’d on your angling; when your diver Did hang a salt-fish on his hook, which he With fervency drew up. “_Cleo_: That time!—O times!— I laughed him out of patience, and that night I laugh’d him into patience; and next morn, Ere the ninth hour, I drunk him to his bed.” We owe most of our knowledge as to the technical methods, the varying minutiæ, and the numerous materials employed by the Greeks and Latins in Fishing and Angling, to Oppian, to Ælian, Pliny the Elder, and Plutarch. “Bearing somewhat the same relationship to Eclogues of Fishermen that Virgil’s Georgics do to those of Shepherds, were the Greek verse treatises on fish and fishing. No fewer than six didactic Epics of the sort were composed, but only that of Oppian is extant in complete form.[402] It is written in hexameter, and combines material based on observations with much extraordinary information gathered from floating material. In the last part of the treatise, the accounts given of the methods of capturing fish by men on various coasts lend a few pictures akin to independent Idylls.” “Most of the poem, however, is very like Pliny’s _Natural History_, put into verse. These didactic poems, as a whole, have little relationship with the Piscatory Eclogue, other than that implied in the fact that they are written in verse and tell much about the practices of fishers.” This grudging estimate of Oppian by Mr. Hall contrasts strangely with the terms of highest eulogy which authors of all ages have bestowed on him. Scaliger calls him “a divine and incomparable poet.” Sir Thomas Browne bewails with wonder that “Oppian’s elegant lines are so much neglected: surely we hereby reject one of the best epic poets.” Scaliger remarks that no author makes more frequent use than Oppian of similes, which he praises warmly for their strength and beauty, for their brilliancy and effect. In my humble opinion they occur far too frequently and regularly. If we do not come across one at least in every hundred lines, the effect is agreeable disappointment. The subjects of comparison, moreover, are conventional and limited.